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Home  »  Parnassus  »  William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

Liberty

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

(See full text.)

WHO can divine what impulses from God

Reach the caged lark, within a town abode,

From his poor inch or two of daisied sod?

Oh, yield him back his privilege! No sea

Swells like the bosom of a man set free:

A wilderness is rich with liberty.

Roll on, ye spouting whales, who die or keep

Your independence in the fathomless deep!

Spread, tiny Nautilus, the living sail;

Dive, at thy choice, or brave the freshening gale!

If unreproved the ambitious eagle mount

Sunward to seek the daylight in its fount,

Bays, gulfs, and ocean’s Indian width, shall be,

Till the world perishes, a field for thee!